Collaboration, Creation, Change
Collaborating With Creatives
On the imaginary list of “21st Century Things To Do”, I can now cross off “appear on a podcast”. Granted, the podcast is one that my brother has put together with another friend of his, but it counts all the same. The podcast they run is The Coffee Sketch Podcast. Being that they are both Architects, the subject matter is geared toward their profession and one (or maybe two?!) of most important tools of the trade. That is the art of sketching (coffee). As I mentioned in this post from May, I have a little hand in that podcast, as I created the theme music for it. These guys have been rather steadily chugging along in producing the podcast and are quickly developing a solid show. They have a good rapport, switching off naturally and injecting humor along the way. My guest appearance came about after commenting on one of the brilliant coffee sketches posted by my brother’s co-host.
If you’re a regular reader (hi mom), then you’ll know that I’ve been working on an EP (more on that later). I had this “Eureka!” moment while admiring the sketch that this EP will eventually need artwork. As you can see from the exchange, I’m excited about the prospect of working together with friends & family on my big music project. This concept of collaboration became the main topic for the podcast appearance. It was great fun, and coincided perfectly with a couple days off from work, making it easy to synch our schedules. Due to some technical difficulties, the podcast isn’t available yet, but should be soon. I hope to be able to make more appearances in the future.
EP Update
As I mentioned before, I’ve been making progress on the ambient EP project that I’ve been working on. As of this writing, I have two tracks in the can, and have ideas for the basis of the last two tracks. Continuing with the collaboration concept (alliteration!), I’m sourcing samples from my brother playing guitar. I gave him the rough outline of what I’m looking for, and I can’t wait to hear what he comes up with. I’m excited to continue – just need to find the time! With any luck, by the time I write the next blog post (late September perhaps?!), I’ll have all four tracks recorded and ready to release.
A Bit About Recording Workflow
While it would have been simple enough to record these tracks straight off the main output into my digital recorder, I had another method in mind. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense for this project (and possibly future projects). The original Music For Airports was made using tape loops. I’ve had a couple of high quality cassette recorders sitting idle and thought this would be the perfect project to really put at least one of them to good use. So, I’m running the main outs into the Tascam Porta-02. I heard you can run a hot signal into these types of recorders, driving the inputs, which adds that tape sound – that analog saturation that seems to be so popular right now. After a couple quick tests, I got the levels where I want them and I’m pleased with the results. After that, I simply playback the tape into my digital recorder and boom, there’s my finished song, ready for upload. I really like how it’s come out so far, and I love the fact that I could still incorporate tape in some way. Keep looking back here for updates, I hope to be able to share this project with the world soon.
Item! New Computer
In a strange turn of events, this blog post is being authored on a brand new 2019 Macbook Air. That’s not a plug for Apple gear (though I am a fan); just a way to intro the fact that my old laptop finally kicked the bucket. RIP 15” Macbook Pro (2011-2019). It’s not totally dead, but a dead GPU has currently crippled it to an unusable state. I managed to get most of my critical data backed up. However, after extensive googling, I found that I can mount the hard drive in an enclosure and use it as a portable USB hard drive. That’s a nice bonus, which should extend the 256gb SSD on the new machine. I still want / need to get it to boot at least one more time in order to take note of some UI settings and things of that nature. While not critical, I’d like to see if I can salvage the old laptop, or at least succeed in one more boot. All-in-all, I’m enjoying the new machine and having fun with the opportunity for a tabula rasa; free to start a nice, clean setup with knowledge gained from the past 8+ years of macbook ownership.
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